Friday, May 31, 2013

ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY..... TIME TO MAKE SOME
CHOICES!! THIS IS BULLSHIT. MOOCHER MICHELLE GOES TO IRELAND NEXT WEEK
AND STAYS in A $ 3750/ night suite and books 30 rooms for her
entourage....

Meanwhile at Camp Leatherneck...AFGHANISTAN.... OUR BROTHER AND SISTERS.... serving our country hear this..... SHOW YOUR ANGER AND OUTRAGE BY POSTING THIS IN AS MANY GROUPS AS POSSIBLE

BREAKING May 30, 2013>>>>>Marines at Camp Leatherneck
in Afghanistan will lose a key daily meal starting Saturday, causing
some to forgo a hot breakfast and others to work six-plus hours without
refueling on cooked food, according to Marines at the base and Marine
Corps officials.

The midnight ration service — known there as
“midrats" — supplies breakfast to Marines on midnight-to-noon shifts and
dinner to Marines who are ending noon-to-midnight work periods. It's
described as one of the few times the Marines at Leatherneck can be
together in one place.

The base, which is located in
Afghanistan’s southwestern Helmand Province, flanked by Iran and
Pakistan, also will remove its 24-hour sandwich bar. It plans to replace
the dishes long offered at midnight with pre-packaged MREs, said Marine
Corps Lt. Col. Cliff Gilmore, who has been deployed in Afghanistan
since February.

The moves, though unpopular with many Marines
on the ground and their families back home, are emblematic of the
massive drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan and the dismantling
of U.S. military facilities. More than 30,000 U.S. service members will
leave Afghanistan in coming months as the U.S. prepares to hand
responsibility for security to Afghan forces in 2014.

While no Marine at Camp Leatherneck agreed to speak on the record, many are privately angry about the hit on base morale.

"This boils my skin. One of my entire shifts will go 6.5 hours without a
meal. If we need to cut back on money I could come up with 100 other
places,” one Leatherneck-based Marine wrote in an email this week to his
wife and shared with NBC News. (The Marine declined to speak on the
record.) “Instead, we will target the biggest contributor to morale. I
must be losing my mind. What is our senior leadership thinking? I just
got back from flying my ass off and in a few days, I will not have a
meal to replenish me after being away for over 9 hours.”

U.S. Marines enter the chow hall for dinner, left, after taking turns
clearing ammo from the chambers of their weapons into a barrel, right,
at Camp Leatherneck, in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, in
September 2009.

Until Saturday, Leatherneck’s dining facility
will offer its customary four meals per day. After June 1, the menu
drops to three daily meals and, eventually, there will be only two hot
meals served, Gilmore revealed in an email to the impacted Marines,
adding: “Any time a dining hall meal is eliminated it will be replaced
from a plentiful stock of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat — or any one of
several creative acronyms our Marines have come up with.)”

“The
fact is our force in Afghanistan is shrinking fast and all the creature
comforts and services deployed military-members have grown accustomed
to over the past decade are going to be reduced," Gilmore wrote in an
email to NBC News. “When serving we are challenged to endure different
things — to face different challenges — over time. But we're an odd
bunch, we Marines — probably no surprise that we'll complain more about
losing the sandwich bar on the way out than we did about getting shot at
on the way in.”

The tactical reason for the cooking scale-down
is that the people who are assigned to “support services” — such as
food workers — “need to go home before the people who provide the
security which enables those services,” Gilmore wrote. “This is a
natural outcome of the drawdown process unrelated to sequestration or
the ongoing budget issues back in the States.”

Back home,
spouses and friends of the troops in Afghanistan are criticizing the
loss of hot meals as a poor logistical choice that will impact the
service members' overall nutrition, energy and spirits.

“MREs
are an alternative for when you can’t get to healthy food. They're
supposed to be for desperation,” said Babette Maxwell, founder and
executive director of Military Spouse Magazine, the wife of a Navy pilot
and an advocate for service members and their families. “These guys
have six to nine months left on their deployment. These are highly
athletic and highly physical people, toting guns, not working any less
now than before — and not working out any less either. Now, they’re
short a meal and they don’t have any healthy alternatives.”

According to the Marine Corps, a typical MRE may contain chili with
beans, cornbread, cheese spread, crackers, a toaster pastry, a
“dairyshake,” red pepper, a spoon, a flameless heater and a “hot
beverage bag.”

To fill the hot food gap in Afghanistan, a group
of U.S.-based military advocates and military-family members recently
launched a Facebook page — called “Breakfast for Bagram" — to spur food
donations that will be mailed to troops all around Afghanistan. The page
states: “We are here to help collect and send non-perishable breakfast
type foods to the deployed troops on the 17 bases in Afghanistan that
are not currently serving breakfast 'hot chow' and Midnight chow due to
the budget cuts.”

Gilmore described cooked-meal reduction as
part of a larger effort to “become increasingly austere” as the force
shrinks, but he said the base members will not face an unhealthy calorie
shortage.

“The Marines here at Leatherneck may have to endure
the monotony of a limited menu and sometimes an MRE — but they will not
suffer from malnutrition unless they choose not to eat,” Gilmore said.

At home, some military family members nonetheless called the change a mistake.

“Psychologically, midrats is probably the most important of all the
meals because that’s the big social time — where first (shift) crew is
coming off and second (shift) crew is coming on,” Maxwell said."That's
where you get the esprit de corps, the camaraderie. It's not just the
food you're taking away, it's their social sustenance.”

Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. was born on January 21, 1951 in the Bronx, New York and was raised
in Elmhurst, Queens. His father (1905-1970) hailed from Barbados and
worked as a real estate broker; his mother (Miriam) was the
American-born daughter of immigrants from Saint Philip, Barbados.
In 1969 Holder enrolled at Columbia University, where he became involved
in what he would later describe as the “rise of black consciousness”
protests on campus. As a freshman, he took a leadership role with the
Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded
that the school's abandoned ROTC (Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps)
office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge” -- “in honor of a man who
recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.” In
1970, while still a freshman, Holder participated in a five-day
occupation of that office; according to some accounts, the occupiers
were armed. In addition, Holder and SAAS also occupied the office of
Henry Coleman, Dean of Freshmen, until their demands were met.
Holder graduated from Columbia University in 1973 with a degree in
American history. Three years later he earned a J.D. from Columbia Law
School. During one of the summers between his law-school academic years,
Holder worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Holder was employed by the U.S. Justice Department’s Public Integrity
Section from 1976 to 1988. In 1988 President Ronald Reagan appointed him
as a Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Five
years later, President Bill Clinton appointed Holder as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. In 1997 Clinton nominated
Holder to replace Jamie Gorelick, the retiring Deputy Attorney General
in Janet Reno’s Justice Department; Holder was confirmed by
the Senate in a unanimous vote.
As Deputy Attorney General, Holder, as The Washington Post explains,
“was the gatekeeper for presidential pardons.” Indeed, Holder was a key
figure entrusted with the task of vetting the Clinton administration’s
176 last-minute pardons in January 2001. The beneficiaries of those
pardons included such notables as former Weather Underground members Susan Rosenberg
(who was involved in the deadly 1981 armed robbery of a Brink’s armored
car) and Linda Evans (who had used false identification to buy
firearms, had harbored a fugitive, and was in possession of 740 pounds
of dynamite at the time of her arrest in 1985).HOLDER AND THE PARDON OF MARC RICH
Holder played a particularly significant role in what was perhaps the
most infamous of Clinton's 176 pardons—the one granted to the
billionaire financier Marc Rich, a fugitive oil broker
who had illegally purchased oil from Iran during the American trade
embargo, and had then proceeded to hide more than $100 million in
profits by using dummy transactions in off-shore corporations. Rich
later renounced his American citizenship and fled to Switzerland to avoid prosecution for 51 counts of racketeering, wire fraud, tax fraud, tax evasion, and the illegal oil transactions with Iran.
Over the years, Rich’s ex-wife Denise had funneled at least $1.5 million to Clinton interests. Some $1.2 million went to the Democratic National Committee, $75,000 went to Hillary Clinton’s
2000 Senate campaign, and $450,000 helped finance the Bill Clinton
Library in Arkansas. Mrs. Rich also had given expensive gifts to the
Clintons and, according to some rumors, had a very close relationship
with the President.According toThe New York Times:

“Mr. Holder had more than a half-dozen contacts with Mr. Rich’s lawyers
over 15 months, including phone calls, e-mail and memorandums that
helped keep alive Mr. Rich’s prospects for a legal resolution to his
case. And Mr. Holder’s final opinion on the matter—a recommendation to
the White House on the eve of the pardon that he was ‘neutral, leaning
toward’ favorable—helped ensure that Mr. Clinton signed the pardon
despite objections from other senior staff members.”

“Holder’s role in the Rich issue actually began … [a]t a corporate
dinner in November 1998, [where] Mr. Holder was seated at a table with a
public-relations executive named Gershon Kekst, who had been trying to
help Mr. Rich resolve his legal troubles. When Mr. Kekst learned that
his dinner companion was the deputy attorney general, he proceeded to
bring up the case of an unnamed acquaintance who had been ‘improperly
indicted by an overzealous prosecutor.’ … A person in that situation,
Mr. Holder advised, should ‘hire a lawyer who knows the process, he
comes to me, we work it out.’ Mr. Kekst wanted to know if Mr. Holder
could suggest a lawyer. Mr. Holder pointed to a former White House
counsel sitting nearby. ‘There’s Jack Quinn,’ he said. ‘He’s a perfect
example.’ Months later, Mr. Rich’s advisers settled on Mr. Quinn to lead
the legal efforts …”

Between October 1999 and January 2001, Holder and Quinn discussed the Rich case on at least six separate occasions. SaysThe New York Times:

“In February 2000, Mr. Quinn sent Mr. Holder a memorandum entitled ‘Why
D.O.J. [Department of Justice] Should Review the Marc Rich Indictment.’
About a month later, Mr. Holder spoke with Mr. Quinn again and told him
that ‘we’re all sympathetic’ and that the legal ‘equities’ in the issue
were ‘on your side.’ … By the fall of 2000, efforts to re-open the
criminal case were dead, and Mr. Rich’s lawyers had moved on to the idea
of a pardon. Again, Mr. Quinn turned to Mr. Holder. On Nov. 21, 2000,
at the close of a meeting on a separate topic, Mr. Quinn took Mr. Holder
aside, told him he was planning on filing a lengthy pardon petition
with the White House and asked whether the White House should contact
Mr. Holder for his opinion … In a separate e-mail message that Mr. Quinn
[had] sent three days before that to other members of the Rich team,…
he wrote: ‘Spoke to him last evening. Says to go straight to W.H. [White
House]. Also says timing is good.’ …

“For the next months, Mr. Rich’s team pressed ahead with the pardon …
On Jan. 19, 2001, Mr. Quinn called Mr. Holder and let him know that the
White House would be contacting him for his recommendation on the
pardon, which he said was receiving ‘serious consideration.’ Mr. Holder
told him that he did not have a personal problem with the pardon, and
Mr. Quinn quickly passed on the gist of the conversation to the White
House. Minutes later, Mr. Holder received a call from Beth Nolan, the
White House counsel, who had opposed the pardon idea and was surprised
to hear that Mr. Holder apparently felt differently.

“Mr. Holder, according to Ms. Nolan’s testimony, told her that if the
Israelis were in fact pushing for the pardon, he would find that
‘persuasive’ and would be ‘neutral leaning toward’ favorable.”

The next day, President Clinton signed the pardon. Clinton later cited Holder’s assessment as one of the factors that had persuaded him to issue the pardon. And once the pardon was granted, Holder sent his congratulations to Quinn.
Although he clearly had interceded on Rich’s behalf beginning in 1999, Holder in 2001 told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that “Mr. Rich’s name was unfamiliar to me” in 1999. Holder then elaborated that he had “gained only a passing familiarity with the underlying facts of the Rich case” during the months that followed.
But Holder's account was entirely untrue. As early as 1995,
when Holder was the Clinton-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of
Columbia, his office had conducted an investigation into Rich and his
business interests for tax evasion and other suspicious activity. Also in 1995,
Holder's office filed a civil suit against the Swiss trading company
Clarendon, Ltd. because that company, in obtaining $45 million in
government contracts, had concealed the fact that it was controlled by
Rich, whose history of fraud and his status as a fugitive rendered him
legally ineligible for government contracts. Ultimately, Holder agreed to dismiss the case in exchange for a payment to the government of $1.2 million.
A March 2002 congressional report concluded
that Rich's lawyers had tried to circumvent prosecutors (who they knew
would oppose the pardon), and instead had chosen to take their case
directly to the White House. Holder’s assistance in this process,
coupled with his failure to alert prosecutors of a pending pardon, was
crucial, said the report.
In 2009, when President Obama nominated Holder to be Attorney General,
Holder, at the nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
was asked by Senator Arlen Specter: “Were you aware of the kind of record this man [Rich] had?” Holder replied:

"No I was not. And that was one of the mistakes that I made. I did not
really acquaint myself with his record. I knew that the matter involved —
it was a tax-fraud case; it was a substantial tax-fraud case. I knew
that he was a fugitive. I did not know a lot of the underlying facts
that you have described."

In written follow-up questions, Specter asked: “Did you receive
information about the facts of the Rich case from anyone other than Mr.
Rich’s attorney, Jack Quinn?” Holder responded, “No.”HOLDER AND THE PARDON OF “FALN” TERRORISTS
Holder was also intimately involved in President Clinton’s August 11,
1999 pardon of 16 members of the FALN, acronym for the Armed Forces of
National Liberation—a violent Puerto Rican terrorist organization (as
designated by the FBI) that was active in the U.S. from the mid-1970s
through the early 1980s.
The FALN was a Marxist-Leninist group whose overriding mission was to
secure Puerto Rico’s political independence from the United States.
Toward that end, between 1974 and 1983 the group detonated nearly 130
bombs in such strategically selected places as military and government
buildings, financial institutions, and corporate headquarters located
mainly in Chicago, New York, and Washington DC. These bombings
were carried out as acts of protest against America’s political,
military, financial, and corporate presence in Puerto Rico. All told,
FALN bombs killed six people—including the Chilean ambassador to the United States—and wounded at least 80 others.
On April 4, 1980, eleven FALN members were arrested in Evanston,
Illinois. More of their comrades would also be apprehended in Chicago in
the early 1980s. All were charged with seditious conspiracy, but they refused to participate
in their own trial proceedings—claiming defiantly that the U.S.
government was an illegitimate entity and thus had no moral authority by
which to sit in judgment of them. All the defendants were found guilty
and were sentenced to federal prison terms ranging from 35 to 105 years.
On November 9, 1993, a self-identified “human rights” organization named Ofensiva ’92 filed a petition
for executive clemency on behalf of 18 members of the FALN and another
violent organization seeking Puerto Rican independence, Los Macheteros
(“The Machete-Wielders”). According to
a December 12, 1999 report issued by the House Committee on Government
Reform, the prisoners themselves “refused to take part in any process
that would legitimize the government’s actions against them, therefore
they refused to file their own petitions.”
This presented a problem because the Department of Justice (DOJ) traditionally stipulates
that clemency will be considered only if a prisoner first files a
petition on his or her own behalf, an act which the Department views as a
sign of contrition. Nonetheless, DOJ made an exception in this case and
accepted Ofensiva ’92’s petition, a document which cast the FALN
prisoners as blameless freedom fighters analogous to those Americans who
had fought in the Revolutionary War against Britain.
Among the notables who joined Ofensiva ’92’s clemency crusade were Cardinal John O'Connor, Coretta Scott King, Jimmy Carter, and the National Lawyers Guild. Perhaps the most passionate support came from Democrat Representatives Luis Gutierrez (IL), Jose Serrano (NY), and Nydia Velazquez (NY), each of whom echoed Ofensiva ’92’s claim that the FALN members were “political prisoners” who deserved to be released.
The attorneys and advocates who were fighting for the freedom of the FALN prisoners first met
with the Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney on July 19, 1994. In
October 1996 they met with Jack Quinn, Counsel to the President. They
were unsuccessful, however, in their efforts to convey the legitimacy of
their cause to the Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPA), which in 1996
contacted the Justice Department and recommended against clemency; that
recommendation, in turn, was forwarded to the White House.
But the matter was not over; OPA continued to meet with groups and
individuals lobbying for clemency on behalf of the FALN terrorists. Then
in 1997, Eric Holder—who was President Clinton’s new Deputy Attorney
General (in the Justice Department headed by Janet Reno)—became involved
in the case.In this role,
Holder was responsible for overseeing clemency investigations and
determining which of those requests were ultimately worthy of President
Clinton’s attention. As evidenced by a September 1997 memorandum from
the Pardon Attorney, the Justice Department was, at this point,
receiving numerous inquiries about the FALN and Macheteros—from the
White House and from supporters of the prisoners. The aforementioned
House Committee on Government Reform report stated:
“Throughout the closing months of 1997 it appears that Deputy Attorney
General Eric Holder was active in the issue. The privilege log reflects
at least two notes regarding his questions on the clemency or his
thoughts on the matter.”
On November 5, 1997, Holder met with Representatives Gutierrez, Serrano, and Velazquez to discuss the clemency issue. He advised
the legislators that they might greatly increase the likelihood of a
presidential pardon if they could convince the prisoners to write
letters testifying as to the personal remorse they felt for their past
actions. But no such letters would be produced for five months, during
which time the clemency issue remained on hold. Meanwhile, in a January
6, 1998 letter a senior Justice Department official expressly referred to the FALN members as “terrorists.”
Then on April 8, 1998, Holder
again met with FALN supporters. This time, they finally delivered
statements from the prisoners as Holder had advised in November. But all
the statements were identical—indicating that not one of the prisoners
had made an effort to craft his own personal expression of repentance.
Undeterred, Holder then raised the question of whether the prisoners
might at least agree to renounce future violence in exchange for
clemency. One of the prisoners’ backers, Reverend Paul Sherry, made it
clear that they surely “would not change their beliefs”—presumably about
the issue of Puerto Rican independence—but was vague as to whether they
were apt to eschew violence altogether.
Over the next few weeks, Holder and the Justice Department continued to
meet with numerous advocates of clemency and to review pertinent
materials which the latter brought forth on behalf of the prisoners.
Holder clearly was the point man for these clemency negotiations. As
Brian Blomquist wrote in the New York Post,
“A list of FALN documents withheld from Congress shows that many memos
on the FALN clemency decision went directly to Holder, while [Janet]
Reno’s role was minimal.” Similarly, New York Daily News reporter Edward Lewine wrote that Holder was “the Justice Department official most involved with this issue.”
Throughout the clemency review process, neither Holder nor anyone else
in the Justice Department contacted any of the people who had been
victimized (or whose loved ones had been victimized) by the FALN. Most
were never aware that clemency for the terrorists was even being
contemplated. And those few who were aware of the possibility were rebuffed in their efforts to participate in the review process.
On May 19, 1998, the Pardon Attorney sent Eric Holder a 48-page draft memorandum
“concerning clemency for Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners.” Seven
weeks later, on July 8, Holder sent President Clinton a “memorandum
regarding clemency matter.” Indeed the Deputy Attorney General was
methodically spearheading the march toward clemency—despite the fact
that the sentencing judges, the U.S. Attorneys, the Federal Bureau of
Prisons, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the FBI were unanimous in their opposition to pardoning the individuals in question.In late July 1999
an attorney from Holder’s office spoke to White House Counsel Charles
Ruff regarding the clemency matter. On August 9, 1999, Holder’s office
and OPA held one final meeting to hammer out the details, and two days
later the President made his announcement: clemency was granted to
sixteen terrorists, most of whom had served only a fraction of their
prison terms. Of the sixteen, twelve accepted the offer and were freed, two refused it, and two others, who already were out of prison, never responded.
Congress, for its part, was not pleased—condemning the clemencies by votes of 95-2 in the Senate and 311-41 in the House.
In the aftermath of the clemencies, a Justice Department report stated
that the FALN posed an “ongoing threat” to America's national security.
And in late October 1999 the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report from Attorney General Janet Reno stating that the FALN members’ “impending release from prison” would “increase the present threat” of terrorism.
In an October 20th Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and again with reporters the following day, Eric Holder denied
that Reno was referring to the same FALN terrorists whose pardons he
had worked so long and hard to secure. Yet when Holder was asked to
identify whom Reno was in fact talking about, he responded as follows:

“I don’t know, no, I don’t know that. We might be able to get you some
more information on that, but, I mean, you know, there were certain
people who are due to be released, or who were at least eligible for
parole, had a release date in the next, as I said, three, four years. I
don’t know exactly who they were. Maybe—we might be able to get you that
information.”

“The 16 [FALN] terrorists appear to be most unlikely candidates. They
did not personally request clemency. They did not admit to wrongdoing
and they had not renounced violence before such a renunciation had been
made a quid pro quo for their release. They expressed no contrition for
their crimes, and were at times openly belligerent about their actions….
Notwithstanding the fact that the 16 did not express enough personal
interest in the clemency process to file their own applications, the
White House appeared eager to assist throughout the process. Meetings
were held with supporters, and some senior staff [i.e., Holder] even
suggested ways to improve the likelihood of the President granting the
clemency. Overall, the White House appears to have exercised more
initiative than the terrorists themselves.”

THE HOLDER-OBAMA ALLIANCE
After the end of the Clinton presidency, Holder left the Justice Department and joined (as a partner) the Washington, DC law firm of Covington & Burling (C&B). In 2004 he met Barack Obama at a dinner party hosted by former White House aide Anne Walker Marchange, a niece of Clinton friend Vernon Jordan.
In the spring of 2007, shortly after launching his White House bid, Obama asked
Holder to join his presidential campaign as a legal adviser and
strategist. At that time, Holder's firm, C&B, was representing 17
Yemeni detainees (and one Pakistani national) in Guantanamo Bay. A former client
of C&B was yet another Guantanamo detainee, from Kuwait, who had
contributed to an anthology of detainee poetry compiled and published by
Holder’s C&B colleague, Marc Falkoff. Falkoff likened the plight of
these “gentle, thoughtful” poets, to that of the Jews who had been held
in concentration camps during World War II. The aforementioned Kuwaiti
was released from Guantanamo in 2005 and promptly resumed his terrorist
activities. In March 2008 he blew himself up with a truck bomb in Mosul,
Iraq, killing 13 Iraqi army soldiers and wounding 42 others.
In the summer of 2008, candidate Obama tapped Holder to serve on the vice presidential selection team that ultimately chose Joe Biden
to be Obama’s running mate. In November 2008, President-elect Obama,
who was slated to take his oath of office two months later, selected
Holder to serve as his Attorney General.HOLDER'S LOW REGARD FOR CONSERVATIVES
At an American Constitution Society gathering in 2004, Holder made the following comments:

"Conservatives have been defenders of the status quo, afraid of the
future, and content to allow to continue to exist all but the most
blatant inequalities."

Conservatives have "made a mockery of the rule of law."

Conservatives try to "put the environment at risk for the sake of
unproven economic theories, to play to the fears of our citizens, and
not to their hopes, and to return the nation to a time that in fact
never existed."

Conservatives are "breathtaking" in their "arrogance," which
manifests itself in such things as "attacks on abortion rights," "energy
policies that are as shortsighted as they are ineffective," and "tax
cuts that disproportionately favor those who are well off and perpetuate
many of the inequities in our nation."

The hallmarks of the "conservative agenda" include "social
division, mindless tax cutting, and a defense posture that does not
really make us safer."

"The nation must be convinced that it is a progressive future that
holds the greatest promise for equality and the continuation of those
policies that serve to support the greatest number of our people. In the
short term this will not be an easy task. With the mainstream media
somewhat cowered by conservative critics, and the conservative media
disseminating the news in anything but a fair and balanced manner, and
you know what I mean there, the means to reach the greatest number of
people is not easily accessible."

HOLDER AND GUN RIGHTS:
In a 1995 address
to the Woman's National Democratic Club, Holder announced the launch of
a public campaign to "really brainwash people into thinking about guns
in a vastly different way." "What we need to do," he explained, "is
change the way in which people think about guns, especially young
people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable,
it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our
attitudes about cigarettes." Holder added that he had already asked
advertising agencies to produce anti-gun ads rather than commercials
"that make me buy things that I don't really need"; that he had urged
local newspapers and television stations to devote prime space and time,
respectively, to anti-gun themes; and that he had asked the local
school board to make the anti-gun message a part of "every day, every
school, and every level."
During his tenure as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton
administration from 1997 to 2001, Holder was a strong supporter of
restrictive gun-control legislation. He advocated
federal licensing of handgun owners; a three-day waiting period on all
handgun sales; limits on handgun sales to no more than one per month; a
ban on the possession of handguns and so-called "assault weapons" by
anyone younger than 21; a law authorizing the federal government to shut
down all gun shows; and a national gun-registration mandate.
Holder also advanced
the notion that “Every day that goes by, about 12, 13 more children in
this country die from gun violence”—a statistic that was true only if
one classified 18-year-old, gun-wielding gangsters as “children.” In the
wake of the 9/11 attacks, Holder wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Postcalling for a new law that would give the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms “a record of every firearm sale.” He also advocated that prospective gun buyers be checked against the secret “watch lists” compiled by the government.
While Holder served in the Clinton Justice Department, he oversaw
the “instant” background-check system for prospective firearm
purchasers. Under Holder's watch, constant breakdowns of that system
halted gun sales for hours or even days at a time. Even by the end of
the Clinton administration, from September 1999 to December 2000, the
system was down about one hour for every 16.7 hours of operation. The
breakdowns often came in big blocks of time; gun shows sometimes were
unable to sell guns during the entire weekend that they were open. Notably, the breakdowns were quickly resolved within weeks of President Bush assuming office in 2001, and the problems did not recur.
In 2008, Holder argued
that “the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right to keep
and bear arms,” but only protected government militias’ rights to guns.
Scholar and political commentator John Lott writes
that he “can’t find even one gun control law that Holder has opposed.”
“On every gun control regulation [Holder] has discussed,” says Lott, “he
has been supportive, including: bans, raising the age that someone can
possess a gun, registration and licensing, one-gun-a-month limit on
purchases, and mandatory waiting periods.”

HOLDER ON THE GUANTANAMO BAY DETENTION CENTER
In the latter days of the Bush administration, Holder publicly condemned the Guantanamo Bay detention center as
an “international embarrassment.” He accused the U.S. government of
having “authorized torture and … let fear take precedence over the rule
of law.” Further, he demanded an immediate end to warrantless
eavesdropping by intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

HOLDER ACCUSES THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION OF HAVING ABUSED AND TORTURED TERROR SUSPECTS
In a June 2008 speech to the American Constitution Society
(ACS), Holder, who was himself an ACS board of directors member,
condemned “the disastrous course” which the Bush administration had
followed in its efforts to combat terrorism. “Our needlessly abusive and
unlawful practices in the ‘War on Terror,’” he said, “have diminished
our standing in the world community and made us less, rather than more,
safe.”
Holder added
that the Bush administration had taken many steps that “were both
excessive and unlawful” in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks:

“I never thought I would see the day when a Justice Department would
claim that only the most extreme infliction of pain and physical abuse
constitutes torture, and that acts that are merely cruel, inhuman and
degrading are consistent with United States law and policy, that the
Supreme Court would have to order the president of the United States to
treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention, never thought
that I would see that a president would act in direct defiance of
federal law by authorizing warrantless NSA surveillance of American
citizens. This disrespect for the rule of law is not only wrong, it is
destructive in our struggle against terrorism.”

In April 2009, reporters asked Holder whether he might seek to prosecute
CIA agents who had carried out the Bush administration policies to
which the Attorney General now objected. He replied:
“It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to
protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the
Justice Department.” Four months later, however, Holder referred their cases to a special federal prosecutor with broad and independent powers. In making this decision, the Attorney General ignored the bitter opposition of CIA Director Leon Panetta and even attorneys in his (Holder's) own Justice Department.HOLDER AND ISLAMIC TERRORISM
In 2004 Holder filed an amicus brief on behalf of al Qaeda terrorist Jose Padilla, who had been dispatched to the United States by Osama bin Laden and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
to carry out a post-9/11, second wave of terrorist attacks. In the
brief, Holder asserted that President Bush lacked the constitutional
authority to determine the parameters of the battlefield in the war on
terror. Padilla, for example, was arrested in an American airport when
returning from a trip to Pakistan, where he had met with Mr. Mohammed to
discuss plans for attacking U.S. interests. By Holder’s reckoning,
Islamic terrorists had a right to be treated as criminal defendants, not enemy combatants, unless they were captured on a traditional battlefield.
As former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy explains,
Holder’s Padilla brief was "a comprehensive attack on Bush
counterterrorism, an enthusiastic endorsement of the law-enforcement
approach in vogue during the Clinton era (when Holder was deputy
attorney general under Janet Reno, who also signed on to the Padilla
brief)."
Notably, when the U.S. Senate in early 2009 deliberated vis a vis Holder's nomination for Attorney General, Holder failed to disclose
seven legal briefs he had written or signed during the course of his
professional career—most notably Amicus briefs on behalf of detained
terrorists and enemy combatants like Padilla.HOLDER SEEKS TO TRY ISLAMIC TERRORISTS IN CIVILIAN COURTS
In May 2009, Holder announced that
Ahmed Ghailani—who had been indicted by a federal grand jury for the
1998 bombings (which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans) of two
U.S. embassies in Africa—would be transferred from the Guantanamo Bay
detention center to New York City for trial. This would make
Ghailani the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S. and the first
to face trial in a civilian criminal court. Said Holder:

"By prosecuting Ahmed Ghailani in federal court, we will ensure that he
finally answers for his alleged role in the bombing of our embassies in
Tanzania and Kenya.... This administration is committed to keeping the
American people safe and upholding the rule of law, and by closing
Guantanamo and bringing terrorists housed there to justice we will make
our nation stronger and safer."

On November 13, 2009, Holder announced that his Justice Department would
likewise try five Guantanamo Bay detainees with alleged ties to the
9/11 conspiracy, in a civilian court—the
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The
defendants were Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz
Ali, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM).
In response to Holder's announcement, political commentator Mona Charen wrote:
“By granting a civil trial to KSM, while Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who
bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, will receive a military tribunal, the U.S.
telegraphs this message to terrorists: Wherever possible, attack our
civilians. You'll get more lawyering and a better deal than if you
attack our military. (And by the way, you'll get more rights than a
member of our military who commits a crime.)”MIRANDA RIGHTS FOR TERRORISTS
After Holder's announcement that Islamic terror suspects would be tried
in civilian courts rather than in military tribunals, many Americans
began to wonder if U.S. military and law-enforcement personnel would be
required to be read Miranda rights—which bar prosecutors from using, as
evidence, statements which suspects make before they have been informed
of their right to remain silent and to consult an attorney—to newly
captured terror suspects. In a November 2009 Justice Department
oversight hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Lindsey
Graham (R-South Carolina) raised this issue in the following contentious
exchange with Holder:

GRAHAM: Can you give me a case in United States history where a (sic)
enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?
HOLDER: I don't know. I'd have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I've made —
GRAHAM: We're making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I'll answer it
for you. The answer is no.... If bin Laden were caught tomorrow, would
it be the position of this administration that he would be brought to
justice?
HOLDER: He would certainly be brought to justice, absolutely.
GRAHAM: Where would you try him?
HOLDER: Well, we'd go through our protocol. And we'd make the determination about where he should appropriately be tried....
GRAHAM: If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?
HOLDER: Again I'm not—that all depends. I mean, the notion that we—
GRAHAM: Well, it does not depend. If you're going to prosecute anybody
in civilian court, our law is clear that the moment custodial
interrogation occurs the defendant, the criminal defendant, is entitled
to a lawyer and to be informed of their right to remain silent. The big
problem I have is that you're criminalizing the war, that if we caught
bin Laden tomorrow, we'd have mixed theories and we couldn't turn him
over—to the CIA, the FBI or military intelligence—for an interrogation
on the battlefield, because now we're sayingâ€¨that he is subject to
criminal court in the United States. And you're confusing the people
fighting this war. What would you tell the military commander who
captured him? Would you tell him, "You must read him his rights and give
him a lawyer"? And if you didn't tell him that, would you jeopardize
the prosecution in a federal court?
HOLDER: We have captured thousands of people on the battlefield, only a
few of which have actually been given their Miranda warnings. With
regard to bin Laden and the desire or the need for statements from him,
the case against him at this point is so overwhelming that we do not
need to—
GRAHAM: Mr. Attorney General, my only point—the only point I'm making,
that if we're going to use federal court as a disposition for
terrorists, you take everything that comes with being in federal court.
And what comes with being in federal court is thatâ€¨the rules in this
country, unlike military law—you can have military operations, you can
interrogate somebody for military intelligence purposes, and the
law-enforcement rights do not attach. But under domestic criminal law,
the moment the person is in the hands of the United States government,
they're entitled to be told they have a right to a lawyer and can remain
silent. And if we go down that road, we're going to make this country
less safe. That is my problem with what you have done.

The very next month, Holder's Justice Department elected to Mirandize the so-called “Christmas bomber,” al Qaeda
operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian-born Islamist who had
tried to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines jet with explosives
hidden inside his underwear. Informed of his right to remain silent,
Abdulmutallab promptly chose
to exercise it. Soon thereafter, several FBI agents traveled to Nigeria
to plead with the suspect's family for assistance. Ultimately (and
fortuitously), the family traveled to the U.S., where they persuaded
Abdulmutallab to cooperate.
In May 2010, Holder and the Obama administration abruptly shifted
their position regarding the highly controversial and politically
radioactive matter of Miranda rights for terror suspects. Specifically,
Holder and the administration said that they would thenceforth seek to
pass a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects
without informing them of their Miranda rights. As Holder put it,
interrogators needed greater flexibility to question such suspects than
was permitted by existing exceptions.HOLDER REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE ISLAM'S TIES TO TERRORISM
On May 13, 2010, Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee.
During that testimony, Rep. Lamar Smith tried to get the Attorney
General to acknowledge that radical Islam might have played a role
in motivating several recently attempted terrorist attacks against U.S.
interests—most notably: (a) Major Nidal Malik Hasan's
November 2009 shooting of 13 fellow U.S. soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas;
(b) Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab's attempted bombing of a Northwest
Airlines jet on Christmas Day 2009; and (c) Faisal Shahzad's attempted
car bombing in New York's Times Square on May 1, 2010. Holder
steadfastly refused to acknowledge Smith's assertion. A video and
transcript of Holder's exchange with Smith can be viewed here.Holder changes course and decides to try 9/11 mastermind in military tribunal
On April 4, 2011, Holder announced
that the Justice Department, in an abrupt reversal of its November 2009
decision, would now proceed to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed (and 4 co-conspirators) in a military tribunal in Guantanamo
Bay.HOLDER CALLS AMERICA “A NATION OF COWARDS” ON RACIAL MATTERS
In a February 18, 2009 speech to Justice Department employees marking
Black History Month, Holder alleged that Americans on the whole were
afraid to confront racial issues in an honest or meaningful way. Among
his remarks were the following:

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting
pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too
many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.... [W]e, average Americans,
simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we
have never been at ease with and, given our nation’s history, this is in
some ways understandable.... [T]his nation has still not come to grips
with its racial past ... [A] black history month is a testament to the
problem that has afflicted blacks throughout our stay in this country.
Black history is given a separate, and clearly not equal, treatment by
our society in general and by our educational institutions in
particular."

HOLDER AND STATE IMMIGRATION LAWS
On April 23, 2010, Arizona's Republican governor, Jan Brewer, signed
into law a bill deputizing state police to check with federal
authorities on the immigration status of any individuals whom they had
stopped for some legitimate reason, if the behavior of those
individuals—or the circumstances of the stop—led the officers to suspect
that they might be in the United States illegally. In the ensuing days
and weeks, Holder spoke out forcefully against the bill and indicated
that the federal government might challenge it. During the weekend of
May 8-9, he participated in a number of television interviews in which
he warned that the law could lead to racial profiling and might cause
Latinos to stop cooperating with police. But in a May 13 House
hearing, Holder admitted that he had not read the statute: "I have not had a chance to. I've glanced at it. I have not read it."
Eventually, Holder's Justice Department filed suit against Arizona in an
effort to prevent the immigration law from taking effect. The suit
resulted in court rulings that blocked key portions of the law. By November 2011, the Justice Department would file similar suits against three
additional states (Alabama, South Carolina, and Utah) that likewise had
passed laws designed to stem the flow of illegal immigration.THE NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY SCANDAL
On Election Day, 2008, twomembers of the New Black Panther Party—Jerry
Jackson and King Samir Shabazz—intimidated white voters with racial
slurs and threats of violence at a Philadelphia polling place. Bartle
Bull, a former civil rights attorney and campaign aide to the late
Robert F. Kennedy, witnessed the Panthers' actions and characterized
them as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" he had ever seen.
Because Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits
intimidation, coercion and threats to voters or those aiding voters, the
Bush Justice Department filed
a civil-rights lawsuit not only against the aforementioned Jackson and
Shabazz, but also against the New Black Panther Party and its national
chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz.
In 2009, the Obama administration inherited that lawsuit from the
outgoing Bush administration. When the defendants failed to answer the
suit, a federal court in Philadelphia entered a default judgment against
them. But the Holder Justice Department responded
by suddenly dropping the charges against the Panthers and two of the
defendants; the third defendant was merely barred from displaying a
weapon near a Philadelphia polling place for the next three years.
In June 2010, J. Christian Adams, a five-year Department of Justice (DOJ) veteran, resigned
to protest the “corrupt nature” of DOJ's dismissal of the case against
the Panthers. “I mean we were told, 'Drop the charges against the New
Black Panther Party,'” he told Fox News. In July 2010,
Adams gave damning public testimony about how the DOJ believed that
“civil rights law should not be enforced in a race-neutral manner, and
should never be enforced against blacks or other national minorities.”
Christopher Coates—Voting Section Chief for the DOJ—testified to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
and corroborated Adams' assertion that the Department had routinely
ignored civil rights cases involving white victims. For more than a year
previously, Holder's DOJ had denied the Commission's requests
to hear Coates' testimony and had instructed Coates not to testify. But
in September 2010, Coates finally went public with his story and asked
for protection under whistleblower laws. For the full text of Coates'
testimony, click here.
In testimony he gave on March 1, 2011, Holder assured the House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related
Agencies that politics had played no role whatsoever in DOJ's handling
of the New Black Panther Party case: “The decisions made in the New
Black Panther Party
case were made by career attorneys in the department,” said the Attorney General. But documents obtained in 2012 by Judicial Watch, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, revealed
that top political appointees at DOJ were intimately involved in the
decision to drop the voter intimidation lawsuit against the New Black
Panther Party. DOJ had initially refused to turn over the documents,
contending that they didn’t show “any political interference
whatsoever.” But Judge Reggie B. Walton in Washington, DC District Court
disagreed. Allowing the release of the documents on July 23, 2012, he declared
that they “reveal that political appointees within DOJ were conferring
about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in
the days preceding the DOJ’s dismissal of claims in that case[.]”RELEASING A MARXIST TERRORIST FROM PRISON
In July 2010, Holder's Justice Department released the former Marxist
terrorist Marilyn Buck from prison, where she was serving an 80-year
sentence that began in the 1980s. Buck had helped the Black Liberation Army (BLA) member and convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur escape from prison in 1979; helped the BLA acquire weapons and ammunition; participated in the deadly 1981 Brink's armored-car robbery; and played a role in a number of bombings—directed
against the U.S. Senate, three military installations in the Washington
D.C. area, and four sites in New York City. Explaining the rationale
for Buck's release, Justice Department officials said that Buck had
learned her lesson and had “expressed a dramatic change
from her previous political philosophy.” After discovering in early
summer 2010 that Buck had contracted uterine cancer and was not expected
to live much longer, Holder’s officials released her even earlier than scheduled, on July 15, 2010. She died less than a month later.“ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE”
In a January 2011 address
to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Civil Rights,
Holder cited a 2005 report based on EPA data which showed that African
Americans were almost 80 percent more likely than whites to live near
hazardous industrial pollution sites. He said:

“In 2011, the burden of environmental degradation still falls
disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of
color.... This is unacceptable. And it is unconscionable. But through
the aggressive enforcement of federal environmental laws in every
community, I believe that we can—and I know that we must—change the
status quo.”

HOLDER'S OPPOSITION TO REMOVING INELIGIBLE NAMES FROM VOTER ROLLS

In 2011, Holder's Justice Department pushed to maximize Democratic voter turnout for the 2012 elections by filing “motor voter” suits
across the country, complaining that state agencies were not
circulating voter-registration forms in social service agencies. By
contrast, the Justice Department made no effort to enforce another section of the law requiring states purge voter rolls of dead persons and ineligible felons.
In late May 2012, Holder's DOJ ordered
the state of Florida to halt its efforts to identify and purge its
voter rolls of non-citizens. The DOJ’s lead civil-rights lawyer said
that his Department had not yet determined whether Florida's efforts
"neither have the purpose nor will have the effect of discriminating on
account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group."
Florida did not back down. “We have an obligation to make sure the voter
rolls are accurate and we are going to continue forward and do
everything that we can legally do to make sure than ineligible voters
cannot vote,” said
Chris Cate, a spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner. “We
are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible
voters from being able to cast a ballot. We are not going to give up
our efforts to make sure the voter rolls are accurate.”
Earlier in 2012 Secretary Detzner had worked
with Florida’s Department of Motor Vehicles to identify more than 2,600
people who were registered to vote despite being non-citizens at the
time they applied for a driver’s license. Further, Detzner said that
earlier efforts by his agency had identified 182,000 voters who were
non-citizens by comparing voter rolls and driver’s-license databases.
Detzner also revealed that he and his staff had been refused
access by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the federal
database containing more up-to-date immigration and citizenship
information. In other words, the DHS would not assist Florida in its
effort to be as non-discriminatory as possible, even as Holder's DOJ
insisted that Florida was engaging in discrimination.
Also in Florida, some 53,000 dead registered voters had been discovered when the state compared voter
rolls to federal Social Security files for the first time—as a result
of the passage of an election law by the GOP-controlled legislature.
When Florida failed to comply with Holder's demand that it stop purging
the voter rolls of dead people and non-citizens, the DOJ on June 12,
2012 filed a lawsuit against Florida.
Also as of June 2012, DOJ had already filed suit against
both Texas and South Carolina for enacting voter photo ID statutes; yet
a 6-3 ruling by the United States Supreme Court in 2008 had already
upheld the right of a state (in that case, Indiana) to require such
identification for voting. Thus the DOJ suit implied that Holder and company believe each state must file individual suits to achieve the same right.

In a July 2010 column for PJ Media,
former DOJ Voting Section attorney J. Christian Adams had written: “In
November 2009, the entire Voting Section was invited to a meeting with
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes…to discuss Motor Voter
enforcement decisions. The room was packed with dozens of Voting
Section employees when she made her announcement regarding the
provisions related to voter list integrity: ‘We have no interest in
enforcing this provision of the law. It has nothing to do with
increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.’” HOLDER'S OPPOSITION TO VOTER-IDENTIFICATION LAWS

As U.S. Attorney General, Holder, who contends that nearly one in four black people lack photo identification, has consistently opposed
efforts to pass voter-ID laws designed to combat voter fraud. According
to Holder, such laws—which either took effect or became pending in 11 states
between 2008 and 2012—have the effect of disenfranchising nonwhite
minorities. “It is time to ask: What kind of nation and what kind of
people do we want to be?” Holder said
in a December 2011 speech condemning voter ID. “Are we willing to allow
this era—our era—to be remembered as the age when our nation’s proud
tradition of expanding the franchise ended?”
In a May 2012 meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus and black church leaders, Holder said
that during the preceding two years, the Justice Department had
challenged “two dozen state laws and executive orders from more than a
dozen states that could make it significantly harder for many eligible
voters to cast ballots in 2012.″ Added Holder:

“Despite our nation’s long history of extending voting rights to
non-property owners and to women, to people of color, to Native
Americans, and to younger Americans, today a growing number of our
fellow citizens are worried about the same disparities, divisions and
problems that nearly five decades ago so many fought to address. In my
travels across this country I’ve heard a consistent drumbeat of concern
from citizens who for the first time in their lives now have reason to
believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation’s most noble
ideals and some of the achievements that defined the civil rights
movement now hang, again, in the balance.”

Further, Holder asserted
that conservatives in a number of states were enacting
photo-identification requirements at polling places as a pretext for
blocking “access” to the voting booth for blacks and other nonwhite
minorities. According to the Attorney General, voter fraud was much too
rare to warrant such measures. Hoover Institution senior fellow Thomas
Sowell offered this assessment of Holder's position:

“Since millions of black Americans—like millions of white Americans—are
confronted with demands for photo identification at airports, banks and
innumerable other institutions, it is a little much to claim that
requiring the same thing to vote is denying the right to vote....
Holder’s pooh-poohing of voter fraud dangers, and hyping the 'threat' of
denying minorities 'access' to the voting booth, are completely
consistent with his drive to (1) maximize the number of votes by black
Democrats and (2) spread as much fear as possible among minorities that
they are under siege, and that the Democrats are their only protection
and salvation.”

THE "FAST AND FURIOUS" SCANDAL:
In the fall of 2011, controversy arose over Holder's role in endorsing “Fast and Furious,” a program which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms (ATF)—an agency of the Justice Department—had administered during 2009-10. In that initiative,
the ATF sold some 2,500 guns—including 34 sniper rifles with an
effective lethal range of approximately 2,000 meters—to “straw
purchasers” in the U.S. who agreed to subsequently smuggle the guns into
Mexico and put them in the hands of cartel leaders, who supposedly were
to be arrested at some subsequent point.
The entire "Fast and Furious" operation ended with only 20 indictments
of straw purchasers—all of whom were already familiar to U.S.
authorities from the outset. Moreover, the program was linked directly
to two weapons found on the scene
where U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered in Arizona in
December 2010. By the fall of 2011, the weapons that had been
transferred as part of "Fast and Furious" had been used in at least 200 murders in Mexico. They also had been identified at 11 additional crime scenes in the United States.
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter offered an insightful analysis
of the motivations that underpinned "Fast and Furious," which she
characterized as "the most shockingly vile corruption scandal in the
history of the country":

Administration officials intentionally put guns into the hands of
Mexican drug cartels, so that when the guns taken from Mexican crime
scenes turned out to be American guns, Democrats would have a reason to
crack down on gun sellers in the United States....
[I]t's curious that Democrats all started telling the same lie about
guns as soon as Obama became president. In March 2009, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton
announced to reporters on a trip to Mexico: "Since we know that the
vast majority, 90 percent of that weaponry (used by Mexican drug
cartels), comes from our country, we are going to try to stop it from
getting there in the first place."
As she sentimentally elaborated on Fox News' Greta Van Susteren show:
"The guns sold in the United States, which are illegal in Mexico, get
smuggled and shipped across our border and arm these terrible
drug-dealing criminals so that they can outgun these poor police
officers along the border and elsewhere in Mexico."
Suddenly that 90 percent statistic was everywhere....CBS' Bob Schieffer asked Obama on Face the Nation:
"It's my understanding that 90 percent of the guns that they're getting
down in Mexico are coming from the United States. We don't seem to be
doing a very good job of cutting off the gun flow. Do you need any kind
of legislative help on that front? Have you, for example, thought about
asking Congress to reinstate the ban on assault weapons?"
At a Senate hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said: "It is
unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico
and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the
United States."
And then, thanks to Fox News -- the first network to report it -- we
found out the 90 percent figure was complete bunkum. It was a
fabrication told by William Hoover, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives (BATF), and then spread like wildfire by
Democrats and the media.
Mexican law-enforcement authorities send only a fraction of the guns
they recover from criminals back to the U.S. for tracing. Which guns do
they send? The guns that have U.S. serial numbers on them. It would be
like asking a library to produce all their Mark Twain books and then
concluding that 90 percent of the books in that library are by Mark
Twain....
Obama backed away from the preposterous 90 percent claim. His National
Security Council spokesman explained to Fox News that by "recovered,"
they meant "guns traceable to the United States." ... Attorney General
Eric Holder told reporters that even if the percentage is inaccurate,
the "vast majority" of guns seized in crimes in Mexico come from the
United States. And he should know, because it turns out he was sending
them there!
Apart from the guns Holder was giving them, this was an absurd claim.
Most of the guns used by drug cartels are automatic weapons -- not to
mention shoulder-fired rockets -- that can't be sold to most Americans.
They are acquired from places like Russia, China and Guatemala.
Right about the time the 90 percent lie was unraveling, the Obama
administration decided to directly hand thousands of American guns over
to Mexican criminals. Apart from the fact that tracking thousands of
guns into Mexico is not feasible or rational, the dumped guns didn't
have GPS tracing devices on them, anyway. There is no conceivable
law-enforcement objective to such a program....
We also know that hundreds of people were murdered with these
U.S.-government-supplied guns, including at least one American, U.S.
Border Patrol agent Brian Terry....
No one has explained what putting 2,500 untraceable guns in the hands of Mexican drug dealers was supposed to accomplish.
But you know what that might have accomplished? It would make the
Democrats' lie retroactively true -- allowing them to push for the same
gun restrictions they were planning when they first concocted it. A
majority of guns recovered from Mexican criminals would, at last, be
American guns, because Eric Holder had put them there.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, some brave whistleblower inside the
government leaked details of this monstrous scheme. As soon as Congress
and the public demanded answers, Holder clammed up. He just says "oops"
-- and accuses Republicans of racism.

While being questioned under oath
during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3, 2011, Holder indicated
that he had known nothing about "Fast and Furious" until about April
2011. But soon thereafter, a newly discovered memo
(dated July 2010) showed that Michael Walther, director of the National
Drug Intelligence Center, had already told Holder that straw buyers in
the "Fast and Furious" operation "are responsible for the purchase of
1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking
cartels." Other documents
also indicated that Holder had begun receiving weekly briefings on the
program from the National Drug Intelligence Center no later than July 5,
2010. Moreover, former ATF special agent William Newell testified under oath that “the DHS, IRS, DEA, ATF, ICE and the Obama Justice Department were all involved” in the operation.
In 2011 the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a subpoena
instructing Holder to turn over all internal Justice Department
documents related to the "Fast and Furious" program. As of late June,
2012, DOJ had supplied fewer than 8 percent of the 80,000 documents the congressional investigators sought. (Further, DOJ had blocked
48 of the 70 Justice Department officials who were involved in Fast
and Furious, from testifying.) House Republicans continued to pressure
the Attorney General to turn over the remaining documents, but Holder
refused.
On June 20, 2012, President Obama granted a request by Holder to exert executive privilege
over the documents in question. That same day, the House
Committee—having exhausted all other means of obtaining the documents
from the Justice Department—voted
23 to 17 (in a vote that was split along party lines) to hold the
Attorney General in contempt of Congress for failing to produce the
missing documents.
On June 28, 2012, the full House of Representatives voted
255-67 to uphold the criminal contempt charge against Holder. Most
Democrats walked out of the vote in a gesture of protest led by the Congressional Black Caucus,
but 17 Democrats sided with the majority Republicans. The vote
represented the first time a U.S. Attorney General had ever been held in
contempt by a chamber of Congress.
Minutes after the criminal contempt vote, the House voted 258-95 (with 21 Democrats joining the Republican majority) to pursue a civil contempt case against Holder in court.
In response to the contempt charges against him, Holder suggested
that Republicans were retaliating against him because he had blocked
voter-identification laws in a number of states. “Today’s vote may make
for good political theater in the minds of some, but it is, at base,
both a crass effort and a grave disservice to the American people,” he
said. “They expect—and deserve—far better.”

On September 19, 2012, the Justice Department's inspector general issued a report
saying there was no evidence that Holder had known about Fast &
Furious. Instead, the report blamed a total of 18 DOJ officials, most
notably the high-ranking Jason Weinstein (number two in the Justice
Department's Criminal Division) and Kenneth Melson (former head of the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) for "a series of misguided
strategies, tactics, errors in judgement and management failures."
HOLDER REJECTS REFERENCES TO “RADICAL ISLAM”
In February 2012 it was reported
that radical Muslim groups in the United States had repeatedly met with
high-ranking Obama administration officials to complain that the usage
of the term “radical Islam” in FBI curricula was both “offensive” and
“racist.” In response, Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller issued
directives requiring all such language to be purged from FBI training
materials. Among the more than 1,000 items
destroyed or removed by the FBI and the DOJ were PowerPoints and
articles that defined jihad as “holy war,” and presentations that
portrayed the Muslim Brotherhood
as an organization which seeks to establish Islam's dominion over all
the world -- a goal the Brotherhood has candidly and publicly declared
for decades.

SUPPORT FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
During a February 2012 forum at Columbia University, Holder voiced
his support for affirmative action, saying that he “can’t actually
imagine a time in which the need for more diversity would ever cease.”
Added Holder: “Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation
practices. The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin;
when do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are
entitled?”CLAIMS OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST BLACK SCHOOLCHILDREN
In a February 25, 2012 speech
to the organization 100 Black Men of Atlanta, Holder lamented the
findings of a 2011 study of discipline patterns in Texas schools. Holder
said the study showed that “83 percent of African American male
students and 74 percent of Hispanic male students ended up in trouble
and suspended for some period of time” -- as compared to 59% of white
male students. “We’ve often seen that students of color, students from
disadvantaged backgrounds, and students with special needs are
disproportionately likely to be suspended or expelled,” Holder stated.
“This is, quite simply, unacceptable.… These unnecessary and destructive
policies must be changed.” After citing the Texas study, Holder added
that “tellingly, 97 percent of all suspensions were discretionary and
reflected the administrator’s discipline philosophy as much as the
student’s behavior.” In his speech, Holder ignored data indicating that the different discipline rates were consistent with differences in actual schoolyard behavior.HOLDER PRAISES AL SHARPTON
On April 11, 2012, Holder delivered a speech at the 14th annual convention of Al Sharpton's National Action Network. Among his remarks were the following:

"...Reverend Sharpton ... I am especially grateful ... for your
partnership, your friendship, and your tireless efforts to speak out for
the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on
the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill.... I am
honored to be included in this annual gathering once again -- and to
bring greetings from President Obama.... This organization's leaders,
members, and supporters have been on the front lines of our nation's
fight to secure security, opportunity, and justice for all.... [Y]ou are
carrying on ... the work of a leader [Martin Luther King, Jr.] who, I
believe, does stand as America's greatest 'drum major for justice' ...
"Despite the extraordinary progress that has marked the last four
decades and transformed our entire society, the unfortunate fact is that
-- in 2012 -- our nation's long struggle to overcome injustice, to
eliminate disparities, to bridge long-standing divisions, and to
eradicate violence has not yet ended...."

RACE-BASED “DISPARATE IMPACT” LAWSUIT
On April 23, 2012, Holder's Justice Department sued
Jacksonville, Florida, claiming that the city's use of written tests to
determine promotions in its fire department had "resulted in a
disparate impact upon black candidates," who registered passing grades
at significantly lower rates than their white counterparts.COLLABORATING WITH MEDIA MATTERS
On September 18, 2012, The Daily Callerreported
that internal DOJ emails (obtained via the Freedom of Information Act)
showed that Holder's communications staff had secretly collaborated with
Media Matters For America
in an effort to discredit and suppress further news stories about
scandals that were plaguing Holder and his agency. According to The Daily Caller:

"Dozens of pages of emails [sent in September and November 2010]
between DOJ Office of Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler and Media
Matters staffers show Schmaler, Holder’s top press defender, working ...
with Media Matters staffer Jeremy Holden on attacking news coverage of
the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation scandal....
"At 9:50 a.m. on July 8, 2011, Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote to
Schmaler asking for her help 'debunking what I think is a conservative
media myth about Operation Fast and Furious.'"

For further details about these and other collaborations between Media Matters and DOJ, click here.

HOLDER ORDERS THAT MIRANDA RIGHTS BE READ TO ISLAMIC TERRORIST WHO DETONATED BOMB AT BOSTON MARATHON

In the wake of the deadly Boston Marathon bombing
by two Islamic terrorists on April 15, 2013, the surviving bomber,
Dzhokar Tsarnaev -- who had been wounded by law-enforcement officers
pursuing him -- was interrogated
by FBI agents in a Boston hospital. He was not read his Miranda rights
prior to the questioning, due to a 48-hour “public safety exemption”
that can be invoked in cases where there is reason to believe that a
suspect may be able to provide information that could help authorities
prevent additional, imminent acts of terror or destruction. During the
first 16 hours of questioning, Tsarnaev revealed a significant amount of
highly useful intelligence. But then, on orders from the Justice
Department, federal judge Marianne Bowler entered Tsarnaev's hospital
room and, in a move that stunned the FBI investigators who were present,
read him his Miranda rights. From that point onward, Tsarnaev refused
to talk.

HOLDER WARNS AGAINST ANTI-MUSLIM RETALIATION

Fourteen days after the Boston Marathon bomb attack, Holder declared
that the Justice Department would be on the lookout for any acts of
violence or discrimination indicative of a backlash against Muslim
Americans. Without mentioning the fact that the two perpetrators were
Muslims, the Attorney General said:

"[J]ust as we will pursue relentlessly anyone who would target our
people or attempt to terrorize our cities -- the Justice Department is
firmly committed to protecting innocent people against misguided acts of
retaliation. In the dozen years since 9/11, this commitment has led the
Department to investigate more than 800 incidents involving threats,
assaults, and acts of vandalism and violence targeting Muslims, Arabs,
Sikhs, South Asians, and others who are perceived to be members of these
groups. As Americans, we must not allow any group to be stigmatized or
alienated. We must not tolerate acts of hatred."

HOLDER CALLS IMMIGRATION AMNESTY A MATTER OF "CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS"

In an April 24 speech to the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund Awards Gala, Holder said: “The way we treat our friends and neighbors who are
undocumented – by creating a mechanism for them to earn citizenship and
move out of the shadows – transcends the issue of immigration status.
This is a matter of civil and human rights.”

HOLDER'S DOJ SECRETLY MONITORS PHONE CALLS IN ASSOCIATED PRESS
OFFICES
On May 13, 2013, it was learned
that the Justice Department had secretly obtained the records of
telephone calls that, in April and May of 2012, had been routed
through more than 20 separate phone lines assigned to the Associated
Press (AP); those lines had been used by over 100 AP reporters and
editors.
DOJ claimed
that its actions were part of an investigation into AP's May 7, 2012
publication of a story (based on leaked, classified materials)
disclosing the CIA's infiltration of an al
Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb
aboard an airplane. Notably,
the five reporters and an editor who had been assigned to that
particular AP story were among those who had their phone records
seized by DOJ.According
to strict DOJ rules, phone records from news organizations can be
obtained only with a subpoena that is issued after "all
reasonable attempts" have been made to get the same information
from other sources (which DOJ elected
not to do). Moreover, DOJ rules stipulate that the subpoena must be
approved personally by the Attorney General. But at a May 14, 2013
press conference, Eric Holder said
that he had recused himself from the DOJ investigation of AP, and
that Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole had signed off on the subpoena. Thus,
when reporters began asking Holder specific questions about the
seizure of AP's phone records, the Attorney General pleaded
ignorance. “I frankly don’t have knowledge of those facts,” he
contended. When Republican congressman Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin
asked Holder why he had recused himself, the Attorney General
replied:
"I was interviewed as one of the people who had access to the
info"—in other words, he was a potential suspect in the leak.
In a subsequent letter sent to Holder, AP president and CEO
Gary Pruitt stated:
"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad
collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press
and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications
with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities
undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to
AP's newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP's
activities and operations that the government has no conceivable
right to know."
AP reporters were equally upset. Said
one AP reporter: “We all know that confidential sourcing is the
lifeblood of what we do, and people can’t come to us if they think
they’re going to be compromised. It’s hard enough getting
sources, now we’re afraid this is going to have a chilling
effect.”
On May
16, 2013, the Washington Post broke a major story
explaining the real motives behind the Justice Department's actions.
Specifically, said the Post, AP was prepared to publish its
scoop about the CIA's infiltration of the al Qaeda plot on May 2,
2012. But the CIA—particularly its deputy director, Michael J.
Morell—told the news service that publishing the story at that
point would compromise a “sensitive intelligence operation” with
serious national-security implications. Morell said that the agency
would need several more days to protect whatever it had in the works,
and that AP could publish its story as soon as that had been
accomplished.
Then, on May 7, 2012, CIA officials told AP that
national-security concerns were “no longer an issue,” but
nonetheless requested that the news agency delay publication for one
more day. This was because the Obama administration was planning to
announce the CIA's successful counterterrorism operation the
following morning—May 8, 2012, when the president’s top
counterterrorism adviser, John
Brennan, was slated to appear on Good Morning America.
Given the fact that national security was no longer an issue,
however, AP disregarded the CIA's request and published the story on
May 7. That is what prompted Eric Holder's Justice Department to
illegally procure AP's telephone records.
HOLDER'S DOJ SECRETLY TARGETS FOX NEWS REPORTERS
On May 20, 2013, it was revealed that DOJ's efforts to intimidate the
media went beyond targeting reporters and editors at the Associated
Press. The Washington Postreported
that DOJ had not only seized the phone records of Fox News reporter
James Rosen, but had used his security badge to access records tracking
his movements at the State Department, traced the timing of his calls
with a Department security advisor suspected of giving him classified
information, and obtained a search warrant to access his personal
emails.
That same day (May 20), it was reported that two more Fox News staffers -- reporter William La Jeunesse and producer Mike Levine -- had also been targeted by DOJ.Rosen's case
in particular centered around his involvement with State Department
advisor Steven Kim, an arms expert with security clearance. Kim is a
naturalized citizen from South Korea who was indicted in 2009 for
telling Rosen that the intelligence community believed that North
Korea’s response to additional UN sanctions would be another test of its
nuclear capabilities. Rosen published a story to that effect on June
11, 2009, noting that the CIA had received the information form sources
inside North Korea.
That story was posted the same day that a top-secret report was made
available to Kim and 95 other members of the intelligence community.
Using the surveillance techniques described above, the FBI built a case
contending that the information Rosen received had come directly from
those documents, and that Kim was in violation of the Espionage Act. Yet
Kim did not obtain unauthorized access to top-secret information, steal
or sell documents or secrets, or collaborate with the enemy. He gave
exclusive information to a reporter, a reality that occurs every day.
Furthermore, according to the New York Times,
four months prior to disseminating the aforementioned information to
Rosen, Kim was asked by a State Department press officer to speak to
Rosen about North Korea, “and the two began to talk and exchange
e-mails,” the paper reported.
In building the case against Kim, DOJ -- invoking a wartime law known as the Espionage Act -- secretly (without notifying Rosen) issued a subpeona, personally signed
by Eric Holder, to gain access to two days’ worth of Rosen’s personal
emails and to all of his email exchanges with Kim. Notably, two judges
initially denied
DOJ's request for approval of the subpoena; finally a third judge,
Royce C. Lamberth, the chief judge in the Federal District Court for the
District of Columbia, overturned the rulings of the first two judges
and approved the subpoena.
In an affidavit, FBI agent Reginald Reyes revealed
DOJ’s rationale for investigating Rosen: “From the beginning of their
relationship, the Reporter [Rosen] asked, solicited and encouraged Mr.
Kim to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and
intelligence information about the Foreign Country. The Reporter did so
by employing flattery and playing to Mr. Kim’s vanity and ego.” More
importantly, Reyes further declared that there was evidence that Rosen had broken the law “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”
The fact that Holder personally signed off on the subpoena involving
Rosen is highly significant, because on May 15, 2013, the Attorney
General had testified,
under oath, to the House Judiciary Committee: "With regard to the
potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that
is not something I've ever been involved in, heard of, or would think
would be wise policy." But that is precisely
what the government was trying to do in the Rosen case; i.e., the FBI
alleged that there was “probable cause to believe” that Rosen was a
“co-conspirator and/or aider and abettor ... committing the criminal
offense…”
The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald explained the implications of the DOJ targeting Rosen:

“Under U.S. law, it is not illegal to publish classified information.
That fact, along with the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedoms,
is what has prevented the U.S. government from ever prosecuting
journalists for reporting on what the U.S. government does in secret.
This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ -- that a journalist can be guilty
of crimes for ‘soliciting’ the disclosure of classified information --
is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act
of investigative journalism itself.”

Fox News’ Brit Hume echoed
that assessment. “The Obama-Holder Justice Department is now prepared
to treat the ordinary newsgathering actives of reporters to seek
information from government officials as a possible crime,” he warned.
On May 21, 2013 -- the day after the revelations about DOJ's targeting
of Rosen, La Jeunesse, and Levine were made public -- it was learned
that according to documents from October 2011, the Justice Department
had seized phone records associated with several Fox News lines as part
of a leak investigation. The documents showed exchanges matching the
specific locations of Fox News' operations at the White House, Pentagon,
State Department, and elsewhere.
A few days after the news broke about how Holder had authorized DOJ to
seize Rosen's personal emails, the attorney general's aides reported that Holder felt “a creeping sense of personal remorse.”

ABOUT THIS BLOG

I AM A FEROCIOUS CONSERVATIVE
CONSERVATIVE RIGHT WINGER UNDERGROUND... IN EXILE IN AMERICA !
I AM AN UNRELENTING FEROCIOUS CONSERVATIVE:
Ferocious = (fə-rō'shəs) “Marked by unrelenting intensity; to the extreme”
Conservative = (kən-sûr'və-tĭz'əm) “A political philosophy or attitude emphasizing respect for traditional institutions and distrust of government activism”
My page is a place for Unrelenting Ferocious Activist Conservatives across our country to gather and discuss and plan our next moves. I am tired of sitting around and playing “nice” while the Progressive Liberals have spent the last 50 years attacking and denigrating our values and our beliefs while our side sits around and tries real hard to be accommodating and “Nice”! (Political Correctness!) NO MORE!!
AS AN UNRELENTING FEROCIOUS CONSERVATIVES. I WILL ATTACK BACK!